{"id":474,"date":"2023-12-09T00:18:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-09T00:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.illinoisstate.edu\/euphemism\/19-1\/?page_id=474"},"modified":"2023-12-09T00:18:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T00:18:29","slug":"to-the-little-girls-shoes-in-the-history-museum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/poetry\/to-the-little-girls-shoes-in-the-history-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"To the Little Girl’s Shoes in the History Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n
Kyu Kyu Thein<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The plaque says that you were estimated to be eight years old<\/p>\n

and that your shoes were found<\/p>\n

next to your skeleton<\/p>\n

in what is suspected to be present day Alaska.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think about how young you were,<\/p>\n

about what I was like at eight years old.<\/p>\n

The songs I learned, the sweets I ate,<\/p>\n

the toys I played with, the words I said.<\/p>\n

How big the world looked like and how I felt like I could conquer it.<\/p>\n

The way I would run through grass and trip over my own feet<\/p>\n

and I would throw my head back to only laugh at myself.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you were able to experience that too.<\/p>\n

I hope you did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The plaque also says you died of disease,<\/p>\n

that it was spreading through the group you traveled with.<\/p>\n

And you, being the youngest of them all,<\/p>\n

were suspected to be the only death<\/p>\n

due to corresponding notes from home to the end destination.<\/p>\n

I wonder if it would give you some type of relief,<\/p>\n

knowing that the rest of the group got there safely,<\/p>\n

because I was eight years old too<\/p>\n

and I, probably just like you did,<\/p>\n

used to help worms go back into the dirt after a heavy rainstorm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wonder,<\/p>\n

when you started to get sick,<\/p>\n

did your mother put her hand against your forehead to feel how warm it was?<\/p>\n

Did she brush your hair out of your eyes? Did she make you drink water?<\/p>\n

When she tried to feed you, did you shake your head at her?<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t know what made you hurt so much.<\/p>\n

You didn\u2019t know the words for it.<\/p>\n

You poor thing, you were just a baby.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your mother probably didn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n

She could only blame the gods<\/p>\n

for what they were doing to her baby girl.<\/p>\n

And when you finally succumbed to your death,<\/p>\n

your mother must have lost a piece of herself that day<\/p>\n

as she placed your frail body into the ground.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I hope you knew how loved you were.<\/p>\n

In fact, you were so loved to the point<\/p>\n

where they wrapped your body in layers of blankets<\/p>\n

and buried you with your favorite toys<\/p>\n

and your tiny pair of shoes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyu Kyu Thein The plaque says that you were estimated to be eight years old and that your shoes were found next to your skeleton in what is suspected to be present day Alaska.   I think about how young you were, about what I was like at eight years old. The songs I learned, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “To the Little Girl’s Shoes in the History Museum”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"parent":11,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-474","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474\/revisions\/475"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/19-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}